Chapter 1: Of Waffles and Edges
Hunters stalk the wilderness beyond the City, harnessing the Light to reclaim the secrets of our lost worlds. They are daring scouts and stealthy killers, expert with knives and precision weapons. Hunters blaze their own trails and write their own laws.
At least, that's what Tikva had been told almost as soon as she had, in the span of 24 hours-
One, been magically resurrected from centuries of death by a talking, one-eyed flying cube of some kind in the middle of a parking lot in what used to be Russia.
Two, killed dozens of bizarre four armed creatures called "the Fallen" with a sniper rifle she'd never remembered seeing in her life, much less using, all before she'd ever been able to form words to wonder what was happening.
Three, talked to an enigmatic man called the Speaker who knew her name even when she didn't, but then claimed he couldn't explain much about what was going on.
Only that the Traveler, a giant floating ball of some kind, was facing off against something called the Darkness, and that the Traveler had sacrificed itself to protect the Last City of humanity and was dying. However, recently it had started recovering its Light after the destruction of something called the Black Garden on Mars thanks to the efforts of the heroic Guardians, of which she was now a part.
Thanks for making me even more confused than when I'd started, she'd scoffed in her head.
And fourth, but certainly not least, been inducted as a Hunter by Cayde-6, an android called an Exo who called himself the Hunter Vanguard, and who gave her said spiel. Once he'd said that, and placed his blue metallic hands on her shoulder, within the swirling vortex of her emotions, one rose to the surface- joy! Finally, something was underneath Tikva's feet and she could stand tall. Countless adventures awaited her, and in time, she hoped she would earn a place in this beautiful Tower.
As a human being standing defiantly against utter extinction. As a Hunter, slicing through enemies like they were mere leaves on the wind. And as a Guardian, hopefully in time one among many great warriors whose names would be passed down through legend forever.
But no sooner had she left his cybernetic gaze or had time to process all this than the hard, gruff Lord Shaxx had stormed in and summarily dragged her into something he called the Crucible. A trial by fire for all new Guardians, he'd said as he told her to set her ship's coordinates for something called the Twilight Gap, just outside the City. Even behind that inscrutable mask, she could tell that his tone meant that he wasn't asking.
A dozen torturous battles in the Crucible later, she hadn't gotten a single kill. Not only was she nowhere close to becoming even a passable Hunter, she was wondering whether it would have been better for everybody if she had been left to rot in that parking lot.
This thought haunted Tikva as she peeked around the corner of a nearly rusted through metal column, gripping her auto rifle until the weapon parts squealed. Gunfire and pained cries echoed in the distance, and so it appeared she was safe for the moment. Letting out all her air in one gasp, she pushed her legs to their limits dashing towards what she thought was the next safe spot.
Big mista-, she thought too late as a sniper shot her in the head from across the clearing and she dissolved into the motes of light that weaved through her corpse.
The next time Tikva woke, she was slumped next to a box of special ammo for her shotgun in a corner somewhere. Without even a moment's hesitation she ripped the cover off the box and loaded new shells in her empty chamber, jamming the rest into her belt. Then she backed herself into the corner and crouched, wildly swinging between entrances to make sure they were covered, her finger twitching over the trigger as she hyperventilated.
One minute later, however, a deranged cry of "I AM THE EPIC WAFFLE!" soared over her head, along with a light blue blur from the left entrance that coalesced into an single bright star. Her finger slammed on the trigger but the Bladedancer knife attack landing in her chest caused her buckshot to miss as she dissolved. Again. This time, as her thoughts faded and he zipped away shouting that inane phrase, she didn't take it too personally, since this Hunter had been trapped in the Vault of Glass for a year and it had stolen his mind to such a degree that the Tower's scholars had spent the past few months trying to decipher any meaning behind that one phrase. Still, though, it sucked to lose when she'd once again thought she was in control of the situation.
For the rest of the battle, she never got more than a minute to live before being shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, thrown into the valley below, and otherwise brutally murdered in too many ways for her stressed and adrenaline pickled mind to comprehend at the moment.
"The Crucible is not a challenge to be taken lightly," said Lord Shaxx disapprovingly when her team lost. She held in an angry scream, then stormed off to her ship to stew before she would be dragged back to the Tower.
"So, how did it go?" the high pitched and yet feminine voice of Tikva's Ghost chirped at her.
Tikva's head thudded against the holographic control screen for her ship, then rested there while all the other cells in her body deflated. "I got killed thirteen times in a row today."
"Well, that's better than yesterday, when you were killed fifteen times in a row. I think you should consider that an improvement."
"Shut up."
"Shutting up," the Ghost murmured before shutting down.
Tikva attempted to rest her weary eyes, thinking the little robot had it easy. But the low droning hum of her ship traveling faster than light, the rattle of its rivets and metal plates attempting to keep themselves together after hundreds of years of atrophy, and the odd vinegar stench from the dead Fallen that had attempted to board her ship meant she even failed at this simple task. (The alien blood hadn't been entirely scrubbed out of the hull either, despite the fact that Tikva had sent the ship in to the cleaning bots multiple times.)
As a result, she looked more disheveled than even some of the most battle scarred Guardians when she arrived in the Tower Hangar and dropped off her ship with the Shipwright. She attempted to limp herself over to Traveler's Walk, where the Hall of Guardians (and the sleeping quarters contained therein) was, but ended up collapsing on her back on the expertly manicured grass in Tower Watch just in front of the Cryptarch's booth, her helmet rolling next to her feet.
The biting winter wind from high over the mountains bombarding her nose, the refreshing dew on her pale skin and brown hair, and her own restless hands rubbing along the rough edges of the grass injected new vitality now. Tikva sat up, stretched her arms to either side and yawned, then gasped in at the view in front of her, as she had many times before. The City was a haphazardly stitched together quilt of patched up skyscrapers and shanty towns teeming with traffic, a few million remaining free humans scrabbling across its surface. The sun towered over the sky, but even it was dwarfed by the hovering Traveler. Even though large chunks on the bottom of this mysterious sphere that had enlightened humanity, no doubt due to damage from the forces of the Darkness, the rest of it was almost supernaturally rounded and polished.
To think that an energy was contained within this structure that had literally breathed new life into her filled Tikva with gratitude. She didn't think that the Traveler was a god as so many of her fellow Guardians believed, but she understood why they did. Regardless she was always impressed by the Speaker's lectures on subjects like this one that were well attended by reverent Guardians, but never felt like preaching, instead filling Tikva's mind with questions that challenged her slowly growing perspective on this world she'd been thrusted into.
But each and every time she was reinvigorated like this, the Crucible took the wind out of her sails. And then she would go back home, recharge, and then do it all over again. She felt more trapped now than all the centuries she'd spent dead. If she was going to live, Tikva finally decided, she wanted to live, dammit. And if Lord Shaxx didn't understand why she didn't want to be a part of his meat grinder any more, then he could just shove it.
She noticed the metallic spires jutting out from the Tower that used to divide the different docking zones for Guardian ships that rushed in from all over the solar system. Then she reached out to touch one of them, and realized that no matter how she pushed, it wouldn't bend.
So Tikva straddled the fence and started pushing on it with one of her feet, and then put both feet on it while supporting her weight with her hands. One hand left the safety of the railing, the other squeezing it with all her might as her legs struggled to find their balance. Above her were thousands of ships criss crossing the skies that threatened to dock and push her off into the several thousand feet worth of empty air between her and the unyielding concrete of the City below.
"Yeah!" Tikva cried as she let. She'd finally found her footing. Now it was time to enjoy her little victory- until the Crucible would bring her back down tomorrow, at least. She started to sit down on the very precipice, and contemplated lying down and looking up at the endless blue dome hanging over her, wondering what it would finally be like to pierce it and venture out not just beyond the City or Old Russia, but past the dead Earth itself. Soon she would want more than that, but again, she was content to close her eyes and enjoy this adventure for now.
Tikva suddenly started to not enjoy it, however, when something small and round, most likely one of those "soccer" balls that all the Guardians enjoyed kicking around. Normally, if one of them flew off the tower, it wouldn't hit much of anything. She realized that this ball didn't hit much as she toppled off the Tower. Nobody seemed to notice or call out for help, and once she hit the bottom, she'd be in so many pieces that even her Ghost wouldn't be able to put her back together again with all the Light the Traveler could muster.
As what little of her life she could remember zipped through her memory, structures and ships rushing forward at an equally fast pace, Tikva wondered what they'd say if they found her body and sent it, along with countless others, out into a burial plot just undereath the Traveler in a funerary escape pod.
We now send off Ti...Tia...what was her name again? Never mind. Anyway, she was that random woman who had no friends, was never a very good Hunter, and died not in glorious combat giving her all in service to the Traveler, but by idiotically falling off the edge of the Tower. Next!
Tikva almost had to laugh, even though she was terrified. Maybe she should've just given in to the insanity of her situation like that waffle guy.
Instead of being dashed against a skyscraper, Tikva felt the same snow and scrabbly brush on her face that she'd clawed her way out of when she was reborn.
"You gave me quite a fright, Guardian!" her Ghost whirred after trasmatting her away. "What were you up to?"
"Trying new things," Tikva said beneath the helmet that slowly enveloped her head.
"It would appear that trouble finds you wherever you go, Guardian," the Ghost said with a disapproving shake of its chassis.
"Well, if I have bad luck like I think you're saying, then I think I should just embrace it from now on, don't you?"
"It took a lot of light out of me to save you that time. Maybe you should consider trying less lethal things once we get back to the Tower. You should call down your Sparrow and get us back to the Tower before your next scheduled fight in the Crucible tomorrow, or you'll get in a lot of trouble from Cayde-6 and Lord Shaxx."
"Oh, right, I keep forgetting I have that thing. Thanks for reminding me," Tikva said, slapping her forehead before calling the bike out of thin air, lying forward on it, and strapping her feet into the pedals behind her. "But we're not going back to the Tower yet, and definitely not going back to the Crucible."
"Then where are we going?"
"To try new things," Tikva said again with a sly and smart aleck tone that her robot had learned to endure over the past few weeks.
"Why do I have a feeling that I don't get a say in this matter?" the Ghost warbled in despair.
Any concerns the Ghost was able to voice after that were silenced beneath the Guardian's ecstatic yells as the Sparrow hurtled along, making the wilds of Old Russia its playground.